Jimís party reaches his
grandparentís farm at dawn, but he is fast asleep and later wakes in a small bedroom.
Hs grandmother is with him. She has been crying, but she smiles when she sees
him wake up and helps him with his new clothes. She takes him to the kitchen,
located in the basement, and readies his bath for him. He feels content in the
bathtub. He notices his grandmotherís features. She is tall and thin, forward
leaning as if always rushing into the future. She speaks anxiously because she
is always "desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum."
She is fifty-five years old. After his bath, he explores the cellar and then the
men come in from work.

His grandfather only acknowledges him and speaks kindly
to him. He feels deep awe for his grandfather, who seems to have a great "deliberateness
and personal dignity." At the table, Jim is especially fascinated with Otto
Fuchs. He learns that Ottoís is Austrian and lived in the "Far West"
leading an adventurous life. When he contracted pneumonia, he lost his good health
and returned eastward where life is easier. He has family in Bismark, a German
settlement to the north. He has worked for Jimís grandparents for a year. After
dinner he goes outside with Otto who tells him a pony has been bought for him.
He shows Jim his chaps and his boots, which are stitched with fancy designs.

Before bed, they are all called to the living room for prayers. Jim is quite taken
with his grandfatherís sonorous voice as he reads several of the Psalms. He reads,
"He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He
loved. Selah." Early the next morning, Jim runs outside to look around. He
notices especially the ocean of red tall grass: "It seemed as if the grass
were about to run over [the box elder trees], and over the plum- patch behind
the sod chicken-house." He thinks of the grass as to the country like water
is to the sea. He feels a great deal of motion in the grass, as if the country
is running.

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His grandmother comes out with a gunnysack and asks him to walk with her to the
garden. She tells him to notice a stick she has hanging from her belt used for
killing rattlesnakes. Jim, the present writer, remembers vividly what the land
looked like that day when he was ten years old. It seemed as if it the landscape
were in motion, as if underneath the grass, there were herds of wild buffalo running.
After helping his grandmother pick potatoes out of the ground, he asks her if
he can stay on in the garden alone. He says heís afraid of snakes, but still wants
to stay. She advises him about the good snakes, the bull snakes who help keep
the gopher population down and tells him not to worry when he sees the badger
peep at him out of its hole. She says one becomes protective of the creatures
of the earth when living out on the prairie like she has. Jim sits in the middle
of the garden, leaning against a pumpkin and feels perfectly happy. He begins
to feel as if he were "something that lay under the sun and felt it, like
the pumpkins, and I did not want anything more." He decides this must be
the feeling one has after death, being part of something entire.

Notes

In chapter two, we are introduced to Jim Burdenís grandparents. They
are both given full descriptions in admiring tones. His first association is with
his grandmother, who is his primary caretaker at home. She is a woman who will
clearly give him the space he needs to grow and who will teach him to respect
the earth and its creatures.

At the end of chapter two, the reader encounters
the second of Jim Burdenís death wishes. At the end of chapter one, he feels as
if he would be happy if he could keep traveling into the nothingness of the Nebraska
night. He lets go his usual method of coping with the future--prayer--and decides
to give himself over to his fate. In this chapter, as he sits in the garden, and
begins to feel at one with the world. He thinks this must be what it feels like
in death: "Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become part of something
entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that
is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great." The reader
probably remembers that Jim has just lost both of his parents. His relatives in
Virginia sent him to a strange land to live with his grandparents, whom he doesnít
seem to have known before now. He must feel alone and sad. Cather doesnít express
his emotions directly, but does so in the indirect method of describing his feelings
about his connection to the land and the world. He wants to go to an ego-less
place, where he is a one with the world. That is death, but it isnít a frightening
thought for him. Instead it is pure happiness.